Diablo In Outer Space? Blizzard Considered It Once

I’ll admit it; Diablo III was sort of a letdown personally. Disregarding the fact that I have yet to play the first two entries in the series, the third one did not live up to its hype and expectation, and certainly not the praise thousands of disillusioned fans were giving it. Thing is, I’m not really sure how Blizzard could possibly fix that. Put it in space maybe? Well according David Craddock that nearly happened.

In his latest book, Stay Awhile And Listen , Craddok explains how Blizzard were prototyping a Diablo styled game set in a space opera theme akin to StarCraft. Apparently the game didn’t really go beyond initial prototyping, and Blizzard hadn’t even come up with a more imaginative name than “Starblo” yet. Heh, Starblo.

An exerpt from Craddock’s new book explains how StarCraft and Diablo very nearly had an offspring.

“The project earned the nickname Starblo for its mix of a space setting and the action-RPG formula that made Diablo so successful. Like Diablo 2, Starblo would take place over several acts, but rather than journey across a single world, players would board their customizable spaceship and travel to new planets, killing and looting the space creatures they found there. By the time Dave Brevik and the Schaefers left Blizzard North in summer 2003, the Starblo team had produced a few playable builds of the game, but still hadn’t come up with a proper name.”

Would something like a StarCraft/Diablo crossover interest you, or are you still trying to wash the bad taste of Diablo’s third emergence out of your mouth?

Diablo 3 was a good game, but I think (like with duke nukem) the game had very high standards that the fans put unfairly onto the game (except duke was just darn terrible). A space rpg from blizzard (perhaps even within the starcraft lore) would be quite fun I think.

http://twitter.com/wolftrap01 wolftrap

No just NO. what is this guy smoking?

Blizzard should redeem themselves by creating a new game entirely, instead of mashing two games together.